It's a Feral Thing I Shameful I Tasteful I Lifestyle Bloggers I Thirty one and Feral 🦁

July 25, 2016July 26, 2016

The Summer Holiday Dreads

The summer holidays fill me with dread each and every year! Not going to lie.
I’m not sure whether it’s just me becoming an old hag; but they seem to be coming around quicker. Don’t they?
It feels like five minutes since half term for fucks sake.

I love my kids beyond measure, but boy is it hard work trying to entertain ‘the modern child’ for six weeks.
They are loopy…. Like seriously high maintenance! If you decide to spend a day in the house, all hell will break loose. There will be disgraceful amounts of attitude from the nine year old and the relentless fighting between him and the six year old over more or less anything, is outrageous. The top two war inducing topics being football and Minecraft!
Fucking Minecraft!!!!! I mean seriously the graphics are utter shite, I could have created it and I can’t even draw- there were better games on my Amstrad in 1990, but kids are just obsessed with it!

When I was a nipper…

I just used to fuck off in the garden ALL DAY, play with snails, read Enid Blyton books and just generally get on with it. I bet my parents had a whale of a time, they hardly ever bloody saw me. No trouble.
We didn’t expect to be entertained everyday, or even at all really. We made our own fun and when we did make a family expedition, it was a huge treat. I can still remember those days, even with my wine-addled brain!
Most Sunday’s my parents would take my brother and I for a ‘drive’ around the Welsh countryside, to look at castles and such like. I also recall getting dragged around lots of National Trust properties or Gardens by my mum. Those were my days out, but you know what I enjoyed them mostly. In my experience 80’s children were easily pleased.

This leads me to think I have spoiled my kids far too much. Made a rod for my own back like. They’ve got too many gadgets and gizmos, have too many lovely child-friendly EXPENSIVE days out. No appreciation. Kids these days seem to think anything other than this is ‘boring’
What the actual fuck??!!! Try going on a drive for four hours, with a bag of salmon paste sandwiches and no frigging air con.
Let’s face it, British weather is usually garbage and everywhere you go costs an arm and a leg. Also, its full of everyone else’s little shits too. I can just about handle my own without losing my nerve.

So down to brass tacks here, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably going to have to remortgage my house to fund all these days out. Goodbye secure future.

What you saying?!
“You don’t need to go out for the day and spend a fortune Freya?!” I hear you cry…..

Well let me tell you something- there’s only so many times you can take the kids to the park before you want to end your life.

I absolutely bloody detest the park…

I mean seriously it’s like physical hell on Earth to me.. marginally improved by taking along a fellow feral friend for a natter. But even then it almost always ends in disaster. You run the risk of bumping into ‘The Frump’ mums from school, which then requires some bullshit small talk about the PTA, you might even come across a ‘Busy Bitch’ or two which means you basically have to lie through your teeth constantly for an hour, in a bid to hide your feralness from her.
While all this ‘playground politics’ is going on, there will be the constant drone of young ferals arguing because brotherly love just clearly doesn’t exist between them during the holidays.

There will be constant screeching of
“Stop climbing up the slide” from me.

And the boys repeatedly asking:
“Can you push me on this?”

Listen sunshine I came here for a break, a little breather, because I was sure as hell was going murder someone in the house earlier.

Pubs with parks on the other hand are fabulous fun! I like those. Whoever decided to put play areas in a beer gardens is a genius! After a couple of crisp glasses of white, you couldn’t give a shit that you’re on your own and that the children may be about to knock each other out!

A walk?!

No way, since when has a walk with children in tow ever been that successful. Idyllic, yes. Successful? No.

“Oh, shall we go on bikes or take your scooters?”

Bad idea.. the mini ferals usually enjoy this for all of five minutes before I’m carrying them, legs black and blue from the real life multiple bike-carrying struggle.

“We need to walk the dog, come on boys!” They are absolutely not arsed by this. The poor dog hardly ever gets walked properly during the holidays! Please don’t call the RSPCA!

“My legs are tired” is a popular one.

But somehow the energy is there to turn the lawn into a bloody swamp playing football at home.

My new solution seems to work wonders..Pokemon go. The youngest feral, six years old actually begged me to go for a walk the other day to catch Pokemon. Yes you feel like a twat, but at least the dog isn’t chewing your shoes up in a demented fervour at home.

It’s just bloody hard work having children and expensive (all that wine you have to drink just to relax in the evening to name but one expense).
Gone are the days when I could blow £150 in Zara, instead I’m now blowing £150 on a trip to Chester zoo. (Although, I do love the zoo!)

Every now and then, I allow myself to dream of the children attending a summer camp!

Marvellous creation. But, my kids refuse to go! Point blank refusals. Tried one year when the youngest feral was a baby, just for a breather. My then six year old wouldn’t go, tears the lot! Even though all of his friends were, and believe me I tried copious amounts of bribery. Baby feral didn’t sleep much and I was practically berserk for the first 18 months of his life. (Note to readers. I had no family near me until about two years ago, so we couldn’t take advantage of the grandparents unfortunately) Mr Feral isn’t around too much with his work, so I really needed summer camps to come up trumps.Unfortunately it didn’t for me, but if it does for you. WINNING, and I hate you immensely!

Social media leads you into all sorts of false pretences too.

Don’t take any notice, It’s full of cruelly constructed blatant lies and dreadful bullshittery.

“I can’t wait for the summer holidays to spend time with my precious angels!”

Or here’s a good one…

“Film time with the kids, snuggles and popcorn.”

Negative! Boredom will ensue about half an hour into the film and it will turn into a WWE match. Someone will end up crying and you will almost certainly lose your shit!

“Making memories”……….. Don’t get me started. Not even touching that one.

Fucking can’t stand people.

This year I thought, that’s it! I need to go away for a week, this six weeks needs breaking up.
I’m booking a holiday! A week in Cyprus will do the job. My feral friend is out there already with her little boy, staying with her sister who owns a bar. No brainer really.
The only problem is Mr feral can’t have time off so I’m doing it alone! I’m sure I will be fine…. Will I? Eeeek.. I am usually accompanied by my feral mother when Mr Feral is unavailable, who supplies assistance and back up, so I’m not outnumbered. But not this time. There will be nowhere to hide from the thousands of questions and the endless applying of suncream.
Fingers crossed for Wifi in the room to save my sanity.

Anyway, I’m sure we will have fun! We will………yep… We definitely will. I think.

Anyway, here’s the silver lining…it’s not all bad. I know I sound like a terrible mother after all that ranting!
The boys are delightful at times. They both have great little personalities and an awesome sense of humour (I wonder where they get that from, haha!) they make me laugh daily and I do love our cuddles. We have great chats about a variety of topics and I sometimes do involve myself in Minecraft! (I built a shit-hot house the other day, which I gifted to the young feral’s. They were made up!) They both had great school reports and I have been stopped about three times this week by various people at school who wanted to tell me how, polite and well mannered my boys are.

Feeling a bit smug about it all really.

The constant “What do you say?” Must be paying off!

I tend to believe that children are only ‘hard work’ if you are ‘working hard’ at parenting, so I like to think I’m doing something right.

6 thoughts on “The Summer Holiday Dreads”

Ha ha, very funny! I have a 9 and 6 year old and my personal favourite is the incessant bickering! Luckily my husband works from home too so when it all gets a bit too much I can take the dog out (apart from we don’t have a dog!) #chucklemums

The older my kids get, and the nearer they get to starting school, the more it just astounds me that schools are allowed to just close for six weeks. I mean WTF do people with real jobs even do? It’s a loooong time. Hope it isn’t painful! #chucklemums

Ahhh I have this all to come. But I do have the added advantage of a teacher husband, so I’m shifting pretty much all the school holiday responsibilities to him whilst I hide at work in the piece and quiet 🙂 This is very funny. God I really hate the park too, the main issue being having to reprimand other people’s unsupervised little Sh*ts, I mean children. #chucklemums